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HIPAA, which stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is an act or law passed by the United States government to protect the confidential health information of all patients. HIPAA compliance is simply how to stay compliant with HIPAA. It involves abiding by the rules and regulations that hospitals, healthcare facilities, and healthcare software providers have to follow.

To be able to understand what is HIPAA compliance in healthcare, you have to understand what confidential patient health information (PHI) is, and what the implications of the leakage of such information can be. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act simply protects all such confidential PHI and works in the interest of patients all over the United States.

The cost of HIPAA compliance depends on several factors. These include your organization size and the kind of healthcare facility you own, and even the environment and culture your organization adopts. Overall, on average it should cost you from around $20000 to more than $50000, which is still just a fraction of what you may face as fines and fees in the case of a data breach and a resulting lawsuit. Private HIPAA compliance audit cost alone may be as low as $20000 to as high as $50000 or even more, depending on the size of your organization.

Periodic audits are conducted by the OCR (Office for Civil Rights) wing of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The HIPAA audit protects the rights of patients and their confidential health information by carefully examining healthcare practices and protocols for any vulnerabilities or risks that may result in privacy breaches. They verify whether the healthcare organizations have adopted industry best practices and are working according to them. There is only one HIPAA program run by the OCR and it has launched Phase 2 in 2016.

The HIPAA security rule states that all healthcare practices have to protect all electronically stored confidential patient health information (PHI or ePHI). They have to do this by using appropriate means to safeguard the integrity of this information including physical, technical, as well as administrative procedures and protocols. The HIPAA security rule is important because it ensures that every healthcare organization is doing its part to protect the patients and their confidential information by taking appropriate action.